RICHMOND, Va. β Richmond Mayor Danny Avula and several city leaders provided updates Thursday on how the City of Richmond was preparing for the winter storm forecasted to impact the region Saturday night and Sunday.
"We have spent the last couple days following weather reports, making sure that our team is preparing in every way we can to keep our city safe and running," Mayor Avula said before urging city residents to sign up for Richmond Ready Alerts for timely storm-related information. " Our major focuses of readiness have been road preparation. We've already started pre-treating roads... We are also very cognizant of everybody's state of mind, given what we all lived through last January. And so we've done significant preparation at the water treatment plant and making sure that water operations will remain up."
Richmond Roads
"Our department started outfitting our equipment earlier this week, and we began pre-treating on yesterday," Richmond Public Works Director Bobby Vincent, Jr. said. "We will continue pre-treating, hopefully to move into some of our local streets in our neighborhoods, in order to put down a barrier there as well, in order to try to help with the thawing out of the ice when the sun is beaming down in our neighborhoods and the temperature is above 20 degrees."
Vincent said the city has booked hotel rooms for some employees to ensure they can report for work and treat the streets.
Richmond Water
Richmond Director of Public Utilities Scott Morris said the city has spent the last year strengthening the Richmond Water Treatment plant which failed last year and left parts of the city without water for more than a week.
"We've gone through drills with our staff, and we made preparations on the plant to make sure that we're ready fully to address the winter storm event. We have both power feeds available to the plant, the backup generators are available to the plant. We've already retained staff to have them in rotating shifts from the wastewater treatment plant and the water treatment plant, and so we're fully available for any type of operations that would warrant immediate response to the water treatment plant," Morris said.
Richmond Shelters
Richmond Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Human Services Amy Popovich said Richmond has had its inclement weather shelters open for the unhoused populations this winter and will open a 180-capacity emergency shelter in response to this storm.
"This emergency shelter is staffed by trained human service staff who receive training throughout the year. It will be located at a site that's been approved by the American Red Cross, and has a full generator," she said. "When opening does happen based on those weather conditions, we will make sure to announce what that location is through 311, and through our website and through that RVA Ready messaging."
The shelters also serve as a place to go if the storm knocks out power.
"If there are any power outages, or if there are any locations that we need to be aware of, we have some of our subject matter experts in Human Services who are in close communication with independent living facilities, other child care facilities, locations that we really want to stay in touch with to make sure they have what they need as well throughout the weekend," she said.
Richmond Power Outages
"We ask [community members] work through their emergency plans, right? For some people, that means make sure that your generator is ready and use it safely. I mean, one of the things that we've seen historically when you have extended power outages, I think about the experience of Richmond during 2003 with Hurricane Isabel, we had more deaths due to exposure to carbon monoxide poisoning because of generator use without ventilation than we did from the hurricane activity itself," Avula said. "And so it's really important that people do that safely, also that they have emergency plans with their family members, with friends, places that they can go in the event of an extended power outage. And we'll certainly continue to stay in contact with Dominion and push priority communities like senior living facilities to the top of the list."
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